If you shop at Tesco or Sainsbury, or any one of a 100 other big businesses, the chances are that you have a loyalty card of some description on you right now.

And if big companies are running customer loyalty schemes, then you might think would be a good idea for your business, too. Particularly if you’re looking to grow, right? Err, sorry, but no.

The reality is, customer loyalty has precious little to do with loyalty schemes. Have a think about which businesses you are loyal to, and consider whether that’s because you’ve got a plastic card in your pocket, or because of something else?  

Whatever the purchase, there are lots of factors in play. Are you going to stay with the hotel chain whose loyalty programme you belong to, or the one who has got a hotel right where you want to stay? Are you going to fly with the airline who you’ve got a loyalty card with, or the one who’s flying at the best time, or directly to where you want to go? 

The truth is that, on their own, loyalty schemes aren’t a powerful way of creating loyal customers. A 10% discount simply isn’t a factor. But I know what you’re thinking – what about Tesco’s Clubcard? Sainsbury’s Nectar points?  

I would suggest that Tesco's Clubcard has nothing to do with getting you to return to their stores and everything to do with their ability to track the purchasing habits of millions of customers.

Clubcard points are an incentive for shoppers to share their data with Tesco, who’ll be able to market to them more effectively when they know who their customers are, where they live, how much they spend and what they buy. 

Smart. No point sending money off vouchers for wine to non-drinkers, or meaty BBQ offers to vegetarians.  

Nobody is driving miles out of their way to go to Tesco just because they’ve signed up to the loyalty programme, but it does help Tesco to ‘get under the skin’ of their customers, and really understand them, as well as track how well their marketing campaigns are working.

As business owners, our job is to understand why customers choose us. To identify what it is about our business that keeps customers coming back time and time again, and to focus on that. That’s why you should take a moment to think about the real reasons why you are loyal to any one particular business. And why, in turn, your customers are loyal to you.